


The Whiskey Revolution

by jeb124



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 18:41:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9250700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeb124/pseuds/jeb124
Summary: Arthur is twelve years old the first time he drinks from his grandfather's hip flask.





	

Arthur is twelve years old the first time he drinks whisky from his grandfather’s hip flask. He takes one sip at his grandfather’s urging while his mother looks on in disapproval. His throat burns, but he doesn’t spit it out. His grandfather grins, slaps him on the back, and takes back the flask. Arthur decides he’s never going to drink that stuff again.

 

Arthur is eighteen when his grandfather dies. He sits straight-backed next to his mother during the funeral. The staccato crack of the Seven Gun Salute startles him, but he does not flinch. When they clean out his grandfather’s house the next day, Arthur takes the flask from the nightstand drawer and pockets it. He takes it with him back to Princeton. The invasion comes less than a month later.

 

Arthur carries his grandfather’s flask in the breast pocket of his fatigues the way some men carry the Holy Bible. The stainless steel has not rusted, but the surface is riddled with pockmarks from bullets and the cap is chipped. He keeps it filled with whiskey if he can get it, but in a crunch any alcohol will do, the stronger the better. He takes a swig for every comrade he sees slain. Some days, 16 ounces isn’t enough to cover everyone and he has to refill. Every once in a long while though, there comes a day when he doesn’t have to drink at all. Those are the days he lives for. On those days, he has hope.

 

By the end of the war, Arthur and his flask are all that remain of his unit. His army, once the mightiest military force the world had ever seen, no longer has the strength or the manpower to fight. Arthur scavenges the land, steals food wherever he can find it, and wages a one-man guerrilla campaign against the enemy that now rules over his homeland. In the aftermath of war whiskey has become a rare and precious commodity he rarely enjoys. He no longer drinks in sips for his comrades – he is the only one left. Now he drinks for himself in one long swallow to dull the pain. When he can’t get any, he fills his flask with anything he can find: stale beer, gin, wine, even water sometimes. He misses the deep burn of whiskey.

 

Arthur dies alone in the woods of a bullet wound to the guts in the first year of the Second Revolutionary War, nearly a decade before the rebels finally manage to drive out the invaders. His body rots and his ragged clothing disintegrates. In the end all that remain are his bones, his sidearm, and a WWII era stainless steel flask of crappy whiskey home brewed in a revolutionary’s bathroom clutched in his skeletal hand.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a creative writing class back in high school and then never did anything with it. I thought it was time to share it. Enjoy!


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